Exec eyes digital payment platform in all PH villages

MANILA -- An official of newly-established digital transaction platform is targeting to widen the company’s presence in all the 42,000 villages in the Philippines in a bid to tap the micro and small businesses as payment centers to help even the people in far-flung areas.

In a briefing during the launch of the POSIBLE.NET in Makati Wednesday, its President and CEO JG Puzon said they did not have specific target for 2018 alone but wanted to be present in all the villages in the country in two to three years.

“Our end goal is to be present in all barangays (villages) so you’re talking of 42,000 barangays nationwide,” he said.

POSIBLE.NET taps micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) as real-time payment conduits through the use of a device that is around the same size of landline phone and uses internet connection.

Among the services provided through this platform is acceptance of payments for utilities, select government fees, money services, micro-insurance, prepaid mobile phone loads, online gaming credits, and bus ticketing for select provincial bus lines.

Puzon said that since starting their operations in 2016 they now had more than 1,600 retailer-partners nationwide, who, in turn, had registered nearly PHP2 billion worth of transactions.

He is confident of the success of this business, citing its convenience to people who can pay their bills and conduct other transactions through the neighborhood stores instead of going to the malls or banks.

“I believe that now is the perfect time to tell everyone about how we are empowering the Filipinos MSMEs,” he said.

Data from the central bank show that about 36 percent of towns and cities around the country still do not have access to banks, thus, Puzon is confident that their platform will help more Filipinos as well as the government’s bid to include more Filipinos in the formal banking system.

“We are working to make the technology readily available to all barangays and community stores so that they would be able to do digital transactions and spur economic growth,” he added. (PNA)